Place 6: Dark Comfort

October 13, 2009 2:45 pm

Two blazing orange maple trees face the entrance to the cemetery, radiating light like lanterns into the overcast day.

On my way to the clearing I stopped to talk to two groundskeepers who were planting small shrubby trees on one of the plots. They told me the trees are American holly, paid for by the family that owns the plot and its mausoleum. Families of the deceased often pay for small-scale landscaping around the gravesites while the cemetery fund pays for plantings of large trees. I learned from the groundskeepers that the microburst which hit Pittsburgh in June 2002 felled over three hundred trees in the cemetery and it closed for all but essential activities (such as funerals) for two or three months while they cleaned up. As I walked through the cemetery afterwards I noticed all the tree stumps scattered throughout the grounds - I had never noticed that before. "Either we're putting 'em in or cutting 'em down," one of the men said. The other man said he loves working outdoors, especially during this season. "But check back with me in February, if you're still out walking then," he teased.

I couldn’t resist asking about the clearing; this was the chance I’d been waiting for. I tried to sound casual, but I'd been formulating the questions in my mind for weeks. I asked about the piles of dirt and found out I was right: they're made mostly of dirt taken out of graves to make room for the caskets. The smaller groundskeeper leaned his chin on the handle of his shovel while we talked and told me that the marble slabs and tumbled old headstones in the clearing have been “reclaimed” from collapsed mausoleums and graves. They will be reused in future building. They save everything here, he said. The clearing, then, is more like a recycle bin or a junkyard than a dump.

If mausoleums fall down and families can’t afford to pay for the repairs, they have to be torn down and the bodies moved and buried in the ground. This revelation struck me as rather cold and grisly; it seems even the dead can be foreclosed upon. I asked how much a mausoleum costs these days and he said that for a twelve or twenty-four person crypt it’s about half a million dollars. And an amount equal to the purchase price has to be given as an endowment for its future maintenance. This is to prevent circumstances like the one above.

In college I learned about a practice called split inheritance among the Inca kings. After a king died, his successor inherited his title and power but none of his land or wealth. An Inca ruler retained possession of his lands and riches and servants even in death, and elaborate cults of worship were established around the ruler's mummy. The mummy attended ceremonies and banquets and went to visit friends. I often think of the Inca rulers when I come to the cemetery because to a lesser degree we are not so very different. Learning about the half-million dollar mausoleums and endowments drove this point home even more. So much wealth and property are tied up in our dead. This is true in many cultures. There's a cemetery near Cairo where people have moved into their family crypts due to scarcity and cost of housing. A whole community lives there now; there's even mail service.

A bracing wind blew today and by the time I got to the clearing by ears were painfully cold even underneath the hood of my sweatshirt which I held closed under my chin with one hand as I walked. Although the tire tracks and mud are still there, the sight doesn’t bother me or look ugly and ruined anymore. Maybe because I’m expecting it. Today I found some other tracks too, possibly left by deer, each track divided in two like a hoof. I could see them in the places where tire tracks left behind furrows of soft mud. I tried to take a picture but my camera was out of batteries and shut off. I took this as a cue to ease up on the photos this week.

I approached the edge of the clearing where the land falls off the ragged side of a ravine and looked down. Now that some of the leaves have fallen from the tangle of branches at the bottom of the cliff I can see it much more clearly; it is no longer just a tangled mess of undergrowth. I hadn’t anticipated this enhanced view and it’s a wonderful surprise. I wonder at the things I’ll soon be able to see as more leaves fall. Halfway down the ravine a tree lies horizontal, too far away to tell what kind it is. Maybe next time I’ll bring some binoculars to get a better view. Near the downed tree a small maple glows bright yellow, and high above its canopy a larger maple blazes its crown of orange. Two bluebirds chase each other against the fiery backdrop of the maple. The cool, crisp blues and grays of the birds' plumage flicker their melody of flight against the bright orange leaves.

The majority of the other trees still have their leaves and have yet to change color. It strikes me how much more slowly the leaves seem to be changing this year, and I know it is because I am watching more closely. All the trees don’t turn at once, it is a process in stages and the maples seem to be some of the first. Some of the creeping vines have also begun to change, yellow and crimson seeping in around their edges like paper just fallen into a tub of colored water, still floating on the surface. I have to admit these vines are beautiful, despite the suffocating effect I noted two weeks ago.

I take a deep breath in through my nose and faintly smell the soil piled near the ravine. The scent is half wet and rich and loamy, half dry and tickly, making me twitch my nose. Along the perimeter of the clearing opposite the ravine a dense lawn-like grass covers a swath of land twenty feet long and two feet wide. The scent on this side is sharp and sweet. I only smell these scents when I inhale deeply. Otherwise the wind seems to blow them right past me, numbing my nostrils.

Layers of dense clouds hang in the sky, shades of white and blue and lavender and deep gray. For some reason these clouds seem comforting today, soft and close and even kind. I feel supported by them, as if by an embrace from a soft, quiet mother. I know dark clouds signify rain but nothing seems threatening about them. Today the sky is a place for my eyes to rest, not the reflective panel of white that repels the eyes on so many Pittsburgh days. The dark clouds, unexpectedly, are what create this ease.